It’s holiday season, and all over America, people are unwittingly opening their mailboxes to reveal the scourge of the holidays. You know what I’m talking about. It’s that bloody holiday newsletter that people feel an absolutely overwhelming urge to share their news with everyone … ever.
The problem with the holiday newsletter isn’t that it’s impersonal. It’s not that it’s a clearly mass market message sent once a year to a group of people you generally don’t talk to at any other time, made as bland and cheerful as possible. No, where holiday newsletters go wildly off kilter is when people try to get cute and disseminate completely inappropriate information in ways that would be comedic if they weren’t so tragic.
A friend of mine told me in strictest confidence … heh heh … about a friend of hers who can best be described as “insane.” This year, this friend wrote her holiday newsletter from the viewpoint of her three year old son. As if including misspellings to emulate the writing of a three year old wasn’t disturbing enough, the letter also included interesting tidbits such as “Mommy got married in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day” and “Mommy had three babies inside her this year, but we won’t get to meet them until we get to heaven.”
I understand that it’s a very traumatic thing to have a miscarriage, but it’s really not holiday newsletter fodder, don’t you think?
Over the holidays, my mother produced the annual newsletter sent out by a mother-and-daughter that we’ve known since I was a kid – I think the daughter and I might have been in the same kindergarten class (and I’m sure that the daughter could tell me, too). The daughter is apparently married now to the man who was always identified in previous years as her “British boyfriend.” He has no name. He is now her “British husband.” Now, they’ve always been a little separated from reality, and their holiday newsletter just proves it.
Every year, they send a Christmas card to my parents, always with a little handwritten note asking where I am and what I’m doing, and if my mother chooses to write back she will “accidentally” forget to include that bit. I do enjoy this part of the co-conspiracy thing the two of us have going on.
The beginning of this year’s newsletter was one of those sorts of things that you just can’t make up: “This was a much more blessed year than last! No one had a stroke, no one got robbed, and no one had to come home to take care of [Mother's name] over the summer! (We just wanted to!!)”
Seriously.
I did suggest at one point that if Mom didn’t want to hear from them again, perhaps she could just write back that me and my gay partner are considering expanding our family to include children. Then my ever-pragmatic mother pointed out that, although the mother and daughter are a bit Jesus-freaky (seriously, I think that they might set Him a place at the dinner table), they’re also Methodist and that might not have the desired effect. Smart woman, my mum.
Anyway.
So, let’s hear it. What’s the most ridiculous/inappropriate thing you’ve had to endure in a holiday newsletter? Spill it! I wanna know!
